Earthworks
on the banks of the River Witham some 200 metres to the south of the present
hamlet of Haddington (Fig 64) represent the remains of a considerable manorial
complex or grange. However, the tenurial complexity of the settlement is such
that it has not proved possible to positively identify them. In 1086 there were
only two holdings which were inland and soke of the manors of Doddington Pigot
and Aubourn held by Baldwin the Fleming and Robert de Tosny (1). They
subsequently passed to the honours of Wake and Belvoir and were enfeoffed
sometime in the twelfth century (2). By the mid thirteenth both were heavily
subinfeudated, and the process of fragmentation may have continued into the
next century, for in 1346 there were at least ten mesne fees in the vill (3).
The lands of Fosse, St Katherine's of Lincoln, and the Temple of Temple Bruer
were probably held by rents, and it is unlikely that any of the houses
maintained an establishment in Haddington. However, the 1848 tithe award map
may indicate that the site was tithe free (4), and its identity as a grange
cannot therefore be entirely excluded. Equally some of the lay tenants may have
been resident, and the earthworks could therefore represent a secular site.
Ralf de St Vedast certainly held a capital messuage in Haddington of the honour
of Belvoir in 1222, and it may have passed to William de Coleville by 1346 (5).
The only other reference, however, is to a simple 'messuage' that William son
of Alan possessed as part of a fee of 15 bovates held of Wake and fourbovates held of Belvoir in 1322, the former
part of which can be traced back to 1242 (6). Some amalgamation of fees
probably took place in the later Middle Ages, and by 1504 there seems to have
been only one manor of Haddington (7).

The complex consists chiefly of one
more or less square moated area 30 by 40 metres, surrounded by water-filled
ditches (Fig 65). A rectangular platform, partly ditched, which lies to the
west, and is approximately 100 metres across, has the appearance of part of a
formal garden. There is a narrow bank across it 20 metres from the west end
which may conceal a buried wall; it encloses part of the west end, but is
unclear at its southern corner. A 30 metre length of water may have been a
symmetrical pond. The remainder of the earthworks continue on a layout almost
at right angles to that first described.

1.Lincs
DB, 18/30; 65/1.

2.BF,
187-8.

3.BF,
1046-7; RH i, 285; FA ii, 211-2.

4.LAO, Tithe Award B 503. The site is not
identified by so much as a field name or number, presumably because it was not
subject to tithes.

5.RA,
nos 2153-4.

6.CI
vi, 247; FA ii, 174; BF, 1047. William son of Alan was said
in 1303 to be the successor to William le Chen who held one quarter of a
knight's fee in 1242.